Xfl Promoting Skin With Some `Flirty' Cheerleaders

When the XFL begins its inaugural season Saturday, the question finally will be answered. The wait finally will be over, and the world will know at last:

Just how much of these cheerleaders are we going to see?

Oh, yeah: And are the players any good?

From the beginning, the XFL has been unconventional. It took the Arena Football League's Orlando Predators a decade to offend Orlando with a sexually suggestive billboard. It took the XFL a matter of months.

While league officials sat in their offices in Stamford, Conn., quietly finalizing rules and assembling teams and personnel, they asked teams to build Web sites. As the league created its own site, with little football news to report, it added streaming video of something else -- cheerleaders taking a shower.

Now commercials depict the shower scenes. Team media guides devote 2-3 pages to their cheerleaders; the New York/New Jersey Hitmen's media guide, for instance, lists each cheerleader's "tattoos/piercings."

We're told the cheerleaders will be flirty. We're told they're going to be up close and personal with players. We're told they're dancers and left to wonder what kind.

But how much of this is for real? Not a lot, says Heather Brewer, coordinator of the Orlando Rage's cheerleaders.

"It's over the top and controversial," she says. "I think they created that image for a reason. It makes people wonder what the cheerleaders are going to be like.

"Are they going to be crossing the line? No. This is a prime-time television show. Are they going to be sexy? Of course. Who doesn't want sexy cheerleaders?"

Brewer and the Rage women want people to know this is a legitimate cheerleading group. "I'm sure people think the girls are a bunch of strippers that'll date the players -- but that's not us at all," Brewer says. "We've got seven or eight of our girls that have been with other pro cheerleading teams."

But that's not what the XFL is selling, and the question that some people ask, including UCF cheerleading coach Linda Gooch, is whether the marketing pitch is responsible.

"I haven't seen them [cheer] yet; that should be said first," Gooch said. "But I don't like what I'm seeing now and what I'm hearing so far. Aside from them being called `cheerleaders,' I don't see any correlation between what they do and what we do.

"I would like to think that there isn't much similarity. It's always unfortunate when people take that angle with cheerleading. We work so hard in women's athletics to have our sports portrayed in a positive light. . . . I don't like the things I'm hearing about what's being encouraged. It's not anything, at this point, I would encourage any of my team members to go into."

Joe Livecchi, NBC co-director for XFL broadcasts, says the league and network "knew we were pushing the line a little bit, which is after all what the XFL is all about."

Brewer doesn't mind smudging that line. After all, it was the depiction of college and NFL cheerleaders that formed the line in the first place.

"This criticism of objectifying girls?" Brewer asks rhetorically. "Well, look at the college and NFL games. It objectifies the girls to cut to them for a split second while they shake something. We're actually giving the girls a voice."

The XFL women will perform more than just sideline routines and halftime dances. During each game, NBC will put microphones on two cheerleaders, and there will be times when the women go into the crowd and interview the fans. During those spots, it won't be uncommon for the women to exchange commentary with the broadcasters.

"No cheerleader has ever had an experience as significant as this," Brewer said. "It was almost as if we were casting for a television show. These girls could be huge stars. There is an enormous amount of opportunity in this.

"In the NFL and in college, you get glimpses of these girls as the camera whizzes by. It was amazing to me during the practice game -- they had NBC come here and set up, and we did a complete run-through of what it's really going to be like -- they would say, `Go to the cheerleaders,' and then they'd stay on them for, like, two minutes."

The women certainly will benefit, but others wonder whether McMahon's practices aren't exploitation. He has called the cheerleaders "hot babes." On the XFL Web site, commercials depicting the women in short shorts or nothing at all are praised for showing all the women's "attributes."

Then there's this fuss about the XFL allowing cheerleaders to date players. In an interview with ESPN The Magazine, McMahon said that if a player and cheerleader were dating and the player made a mistake in the game, he'd have no problem with the cheerleader being asked on the sideline whether she and the player "did the nasty" the night before. But in a December interview with USA Today, McMahon said that comment was "made in jest."